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a fragmented sea of love. because you’re missing from everything.

I did my best to keep myself as busy as possible today. With no responsibility, no schedule, nowhere to be, and no one to be any where in particular with – this proves more challenging than I can sometimes manage. After running all of the errands I could possibly think of, I starting heading towards home. As I approached my house, which loosely resembles a place I once knew as home, I kept driving. I drove, and drove nowhere in particular. Somehow I reached the lakefront and instinctually pulled over.

I looked out into Lake Michigan as far as I could see. My eyes took in the sights of the water meeting the horizon and everything in between: a flock of birds flying in v-shaped pattern, sail boats gliding atop the crystal blue waters, a man walking his dog, an old couple walking hand in hand, and a woman pushing a toddler in a stroller. Yet all I really saw was a world continuing to turn on its axis and creatures, big and small, continuing to live. The audacity of it all – despite the fact that my baby got cancer and died – caused me to scream at the top of my lungs. The echoes of my primal scream will always leave me more scared of myself than a normal person could ever understand. It is a sound that remains foreign even to the very body which produces it. I haven’t screamed like that in awhile now. I guess I needed to release some of the pain which was compiling inside of me before I burst into a million pieces. I may not scream as often as I should, but I still cry everyday. Sometimes in the shower when I have to face another day without you, sometimes when I’m trying to fall asleep and can’t kiss you good night – and don’t even know where you are, sometimes in my car when I am suffocated by the booming silence of your absence. Other times, in the middle of doing absolutely nothing, the tears start pushing on the back of my eyes – forcing me to cut and run somewhere that I can let them fall without having to answer anyone when they inquire, “What is wrong?” Everything is wrong.

After my ‘primal shit show’ for one, I did what I usually do when I don’t know what else to do. I go find your cousins. One of them always finds a way to mute my sadness for at least a little while. When I walked in their house, the three little people who have saved my life a million times over greeted me with overwhelming excitement and gestures of love I know will only last a few more precious years. The time will come (far before I’m okay with it) when their crazy aunt who comes and steals kisses from them in exchange for candy and gum will be replaced by best friends, girlfriends/boyfriends, teenage priorities – and I’ll have to suffice with a mere glance in my direction, and a barely audible, “Hey DD.” For now, I will suck up their good lovin’ with every cell in my tired body.

As if it were a perfectly normal query, Sennet said, “DD what’s your favorite song in the whole world?” Taken off guard by his question, and enamored by the fleeing innocence he intermittently projects, I stammered, “Uhhh. Geez. I’d have to think about it, Sennet.” Alina chimed in, “Try?…just because it burns doesn’t mean you’re gonna die…you gotta get up and try, try try.” Just like that a lump started to rise in my throat. I constantly worry about the emotional trauma these little people have endured because of cancer, because of me, because of the people I let them fall in love with only to have them be ripped from their lives. They should not know about the pain that has become commonplace in their once care-free hearts. No child should. Most certainly not these babes. My 7 year-old niece shouldn’t know that Try could very well be her aunt’s life theme song. Before I could compose a response, Sennet countered, “No. Yellow.” And the three of them began to sing, “…look at the stars, look how they shine for you…and it was all yellow too.” It was the most heartbreakingly beautiful sound I have heard in a very long time. Luckily, I was safely tucked away in the bathroom – where my tears fell silently into the sink. As their serenade faded your best buddy, Finn, confidently proclaimed, “Well yeah, Yellow is DD’s favorite song. It’s about Paxton. And Paxton is her favorite per-shun.” The three of them quickly concurred. And so it was settled.

It took all my strength to push the tears and the vomit back down into their hiding places, and come out of the bathroom before it was ‘too long to be there’. I wanted to collapse on the ground in between the sea of love created by these three little humans and tell them to fall asleep with me until we woke up in a different lifetime. A lifetime where you are among us, and there are four little humans laying among me. But, I knew I couldn’t do that. It would break your cousins already vulnerable hearts. So I put on my fake smile and crouched down to be eye level with them and asked about Mindcraft and Plants and Zombies, sleepovers and Safety Town. All the while, I sustained a parallel conversation in my mind with you. The one where I apologize that you are not here too, that I carry the guilt with me every day for not protecting you, that I worry every second of the day if you are happy, safe, and warm enough, and that I hope against all hope that someday, we will be together again. Meanwhile, I held the smile on my face for the picture I know will be taken by those three little minds. I will forever wonder how in the world I can look happy, if only in a picture inside the mind of a child, when I am still so broken, sad, and shattered.